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Total Failure
// Why Qatar Won’t Extradite the Special Service Officers to Russia
Professional Unfitness
Yesterday in Moscow, Russian and Qatari diplomats once again discussed the fate of two Russian citizens arrested in Qatar on charges of murdering Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. According to Kommersant’s information, the meeting was in vain: Russian officials were unable to disprove the evidence against our nationals gathered by the Qatari investigation. Sergei Dyupin reports on the evidence available to the investigation.
We remind our readers that negotiations to free the two Russian special service officers have been goting on continuously since February 19, the day they were arrested. Russian and foreign lawyers and diplomats at all levels have been involved in the process at various times, but none of them have been able to influence the Qatari side. One of the suspects, Aleksandr Fetisov, first secretary at the Russian Embassy in Qatar, was released last week, but his release should not be considered a sign of a positive trend in the negotiations.
The point is that Mr. Fetisov had diplomatic privileges, but even so, he was expelled from Qatar only after Russian President Vladimir Putin personally promised the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, that two Qatari athletes being held in Russia would be released. (Kommersant reported on this exchange). However, the main reason Mr. Fetisov was freed was not because of his status but because, in the opinion of the Qatari investigator, the diplomat was not directly involved in Zelimkhan Yandarbiev’s murder, unlike the “analysts in the struggle against international terrorism” assigned to the Russian Embassy.
Judging from information received from participants in the investigative process in Qatar, the outlook for the special service officers is poor. According to our informants, the emirate’s authorities are certainly interested in maintaining good relations with Russia and in principle would be prepared to make concessions, but the problem can no longer be resolved by diplomatic means: the evidence of the Russians’ involvement in the murder is too solid.
Above all, this is the testimony of two witnesses. On the morning of February 13, as was usual on Fridays, Mr. Yandarbiev hosted a traditional Muslim charitable breakfast at his home in Qatar, at which he served zhizhig-galmysh, a Chechen meat dish similar to Russian pelmeny. Members of the Chechan diaspora, as well as any interested local residents, gathered for zhizhig-galmysh. As usual, after the meal, guests and host went to pray at a nearby mosque.
One of Mr. Yandarbiev’s guests on February 13 happened to be a Qatari police officer who complained to his friends at breakfast about an unpleasant incident that had happened to him a week before. He explained that while he was praying in the mosque, someone stole the tape deck from his jeep, an unheard-of crime in affluent Qatar. The indignant policeman also said he had not given up hope of catching the insolent thief and during today’s prayers was planning to keep a close eye on the parking lot beside the mosque. And he did.
Since only religious Muslims come to the mosque for Friday prayers, it was easy for him to watch the parking lot; all the cars were empty, and all the drivers and passengers had gone to the mosque. Not surprisingly, his attention was immediately drawn to two young Slavic men in civilian clothes. One of them was sitting at the wheel of a compact car, while the other was standing beside it reading a paper. The policeman decided to jot down the license number just in case and also memorized the sticker on the car showing that it had been rented at Doha Airport. About half an hour later, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev’s 13-year-old son Daud came out of the mosque to get a drink. The boy also noticed the two Slavic men in canvas pants and light-colored shirts. This time, both of them were standing beside his father’s jeep, and one of them was holding a cellophane package.
After the explosion that roared out when the faithful had left the mosque and gone to their cars, the policeman ran over to his colleagues who had reached the scene of the crime and told them about the suspicious compact car and the Slavic men who had arrived in it. They found the car and its occupants without any difficulty, but because these people were employees of the Russian Embassy, they did not arrest them immediately. The Qatari police officers turned to American special services agents working in Doha for help in pursuing the suspects, and the Americans in turn promised to provide technical support for the investigation.
This was also relatively easy to do. A case in point is that cell phones brought from other countries do not work in Qatar; therefore, all visitors to the country have to rent local sets. Which is just what the Russians did, as it turned out. When they learned this, the Americans tapped and logged their telephones with the agreement of the local telephone company. When the results of the wiretap were obtained, the Russians were already in Dubai on their way to Russia. They were arrested there, again with the help of the Americans.
The Russians’ situation got worse: Daud Yandarbiev and the Qatari policeman who had had his tape deck stolen identified them as the people they had seen near the mosque.
– They also showed me pictures of these people, – Mr. Yandarbiev’s widow Malika told Kommersant. – They were Slavic men about 35–40 years old. One of them had light hair; the other was a bit darker. I didn’t notice any distinguishing features – they had absolutely expressionless faces. The only thing I noticed was their eyes. They looked to me like the eyes of killers. I saw people with eyes like that among my husband’s comrades during the Chechen war and I started to distinguish them from others.
Then insulation trimmings from electrical wires identical to those used in making the bomb were found in the Russians’ rented car. Needles rather than the usual fragments were used as the bomb’s destructive elements.
– After the prisoners were presented with the results of the expert examinations and the witnesses’ testimonies, they were forced to confess to everything, – Mrs. Yandarbieva confirmed (as a recognized victim in the case, she was familiar with these materials).
If you believe Mrs. Yandarbiev and the investigation, the “anti-terrorist fighters” carried out the act of terror, while diplomat Fetisov (again in the opinion of the Qatari side) assisted them: the explosives were allegedly sent by diplomatic pouch to his address from Moscow via Riyadh, and he also rented the car and telephones for the special service officers. Since Mr. Fetisov was not directly involved in the act, he was released.
Based on the evidence against the two Russians produced by the investigation and their own confession, the authorities had already made the decision to try them last Thursday. But at that very moment, Russian lawyers arrived in Qatar. Despite the fact that the Russian lawyers were not permitted to meet with their clients or even familiarize themselves with the case materials, when the accused learned that their homeland’s finest specialists would be defending their rights, they retracted the testimony they had given during the preliminary investigation. As a result, the starting date for the trial had to be postponed. It is now known that the period of imprisonment before trial has been extended to April 24. No one knows when the trial will begin. If the prisoners’ case is not heard before the end of June, the trial will have to be postponed until fall, since Qatari judges go on holidays from July through September.
Kommersant was unable to learn the official position of the Russian lawyers from the firm Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasev and Partners in this case yesterday. They did not want to discuss the subject over the telephone, and Kommersant’s questions sent by e-mail to Dmitry Afanasev went unanswered. We note that the RF Ministry of the Interior’s initial defensive position was that the Russians were in fact keeping Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, whom they suspected of terrorism, under surveillance, but they had not murdered him. According to the Russian side, Shamil Basaev and Aslan Maskhadov had an interest in eliminating Yandarbiev, who had quarreled with them over money sent to Chechnya from abroad.
Meanwhile, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev’s widow has not shown any special interest in the impending trial.
– I don’t need anything from them (the prisoners – Kommersant), – says Malika Yandarbieva. – And the court’s decision isn’t that important either. The main thing is that retribution has already caught up with my husband’s killers: they face bloody revenge to the end of their days. And there will be revenge, because our children will pray to Allah for it all their lives.
Strictly speaking, revenge is not the issue right now. As the North Caucasus division of the Prosecutor General’s Office told Kommersant, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev is legally still alive. In any case, the criminal case brought against him for terrorism, murder, and for organizing an illegal armed unit is still being investigated.
– This is related to the fact that the Qataris have still not presented Russia with reasonable evidence of his death, – they noted at the prosecutor’s office. – As soon as we receive the papers in our office, the criminal case against Yandarbiev will be closed due to his death.
Sergei Dyupin
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 31, 2004
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